The present invention relates to the information technology, and more particularly, to computer implemented tools for assisting the determination of project scope and impact analysis of change request of the project scope.
Businesses of modern enterprises get support of many interdependent software applications. There are continuous requirements for making changes to existing applications. The requirements arise from many sides: business innovation, technological innovation, defect fixing and so on. There are often complex interdependences among various requirements for changes. On the one hand, there might be existed direct dependency between certain two requirements; on the other hand, there may be indirect dependency among requirements of different applications due to the presence of interdependences of the applications. For enterprises owning a number of applications, there are often a large number of (e.g., thousands of) such requirements for changes. It is an onerous and difficult work to determine projects to be carried out for the requirements and optimize the scope of the projects. This is because, in defining project scope, the dependency of requirements shall be considered and constraints on the requirements shall be met as well. In addition, different experts and project management professionals may have different knowledge, experiences and habits. So, artificial determination of project scope often leads to conflicts in prioritization, requirement constraints, requirement relationships and so on.
Also, modern enterprises are usually supported by several IT systems, such as an HR management system, a mail system, a business operation system, etc. The several IT systems are supported by a number of inter-dependent applications. For the purposes of business innovation, technical renovation, defect fixing and so on, it is necessary to run hundreds of projects based on a number of inter-dependent applications. Since a number of applications are inter-dependent on each other, a plurality of projects that are running based on these applications are also related to each other. Thus, changes which are implemented in some project(s) might exert an impact on related project(s) or impact of the project scope. However, sometimes impacts of change implemented in a target project on related project(s) cannot be detected in time, so that the related project(s) cannot be delivered as scheduled.
Usually, a project manager will carefully analyze the impact of a change request on a target project before assigning the change request to the target project, but cannot accurately analyze and evaluate impacts of change of the target project on related project(s) due to complex relations among these projects. Therefore, it becomes a burning problem that how to analyze and evaluate the possible impact of a change request on a target project on project(s) which are related to the target project before accepting the change request of the project scope.